Philly Reverse Discrim Verdict Reduced but
Maintained

April 17, 2006 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - A federal judge
in Philadelphia has refused to throw out a $2.9 million 2005
jury verdict to four while male Philadelphia School District
employees in a reverse discrimination case.

However, while Chief US District Judge Harvey Bartle III
of the US District Court for the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania refused to call for a new trial, he
nonetheless cut the plaintiffs’ compensatory damages
awards after finding that the jury was too generous in its
calculations of the their back pay, the Legal Intelligencer
reported.

As a result, Bartle reduced those awards from a total of
$757,271 to $417,530. Bartle turned away requests
to also cut the jury’s award of $2 million – $500,000
to each plaintiff – for “past, present, and future
mental anguish, pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of
life, and humiliation because of any unlawful
discrimination or retaliation.”
The verdict now stands at $2,660,530.

The four plaintiffs had charged they were fired by an
African-American woman who had complained there were
“too many white male managers in this
department.”

For his part, Bartle concluded that each plaintiff had
presented sufficient evidence to support such an award, and
that there was nothing suspicious about the fact that the
awards were identical.

“Contrary to defendants’ assertion, the mere
fact that the jury awarded identical amounts to each
plaintiff is not conclusive proof that the awards are
unsupported by the evidence and are clearly
excessive,” Bartle wrote in his 32-page opinion in
Johnston v. School District of Philadelphia.

Fired Because of their Race

In the trial, lead plaintiffs attorney Michael Homans
argued that his clients were fired only because they were
white several months after Kimberly Sangster, an
African-American woman, was hired as the district’s
chief procurement officer, the Legal Intelligencer
reported.

Homans told the jury that during Sangster’s first
day on the job in November 2002 she asked plaintiff Robert
Johnston if he was “going to have a hard time working
for a black woman.” Within her first month, Homans
said, Sangster complained that there were too many white
male managers in the department, and later told Johnston
that “Caucasian managers’ offices are too big.
I’m going to do something about it.”

In its verdict, the jury found that race was the
motivating factor in the terminations of all four men, and
that three of the men also suffered retaliation when the
school district refused to consider them for other jobs
because they had already started the process of pursuing a
race discrimination suit.

In its verdict, the jury awarded each man $500,000 in
emotional damages and awards of back pay totaling $757,271
and ranging from $71,000 to $302,000.

Homans said Bartle will also order that three of the men
be reinstated to their jobs. Since plaintiff Bracchi has
moved to Florida to take a new job, reinstatement was not
an option, Homans said. As a result, his award also
included $243,000 in “front pay” in lieu of
reinstatement.